3D modeling of drug resistance could lead to more effective cancer treatment

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding the research of a University of Akron (UA) scientist that could lead to more effective cancer treatment.

Dr. Hossein Tavana and students in his Tissue Engineering Microtechnologies lab recently developed and patented a method to make 3D cultures of clustered cancer cells (called spheroids) that better mimic tumors in the body than the 2D cultures used in traditional methods (in which a thin layer of cells is treated on a flat, plastic dish), ultimately allowing for more accurate drug testing. This resulted from a 2013 NIH grant to Tavana, an associate professor of biomedical engineering in UA’s College of Engineering.